


a bruise lifting itself

by blackberrychai



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Black Eagles Mercedes von Martritz, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Magic Scars, Explicit hand-holding, F/M, Healing, Mercibert Weekend, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Scars, no beta we die like Glenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28680834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberrychai/pseuds/blackberrychai
Summary: Two conversations in two infirmaries.Mercibert Weekend Day 3: healing/hurting.
Relationships: Mercedes von Martritz/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28
Collections: Mercedes/Hubert Weekend





	a bruise lifting itself

**Author's Note:**

> Hands you a Mercibert. Finished in a late night haze for the Mercibert weekend so apologies for any typos I missed! Will do another pass in the morning.  
> A brief warning for some not particularly graphic descriptions of wounds.
> 
> Title from Carl Phillips's Alba: Innocence.

Hubert wakes with a start, to the sensation of warm, dry hands pushing him back down onto the hard mattress.

“Keep still,” Mercedes’s voice says, and he relaxes just a fraction.

Carefully ungluing his eyes, he blinks against the light, even though it’s dim, and looks around. He’s in a large tent, and by the last of the light seeping in through the canvas, it’s the temporary infirmary they had set up at the rear of their camp, away from the front lines. With difficulty, he lifts his head a little, makes the first motions towards sitting up.

“What happened?” he attempts to say, and finds his throat dry and scratchy.

“A soldier with an axe happened,” she says. “Mostly to your left arm.”

Hubert glances down. He hadn’t felt it before, but now he’s aware of it there’s a dull, persistent ache all through the muscles of his upper arm and shoulder. It’s wrapped in clean, soft bandages, and lies limp and useless on the bed, lower arm resting on his stomach. He turns his hand over, and a spasm of pain runs through him.

He avoids making a sound, but it must show on his face as his head drops back onto the thin pillow beneath him, because Mercedes bustles into his limited field of view.

“I should have said,” she says. “You probably shouldn’t try to move it just yet.”

“I gathered,” he replies tightly.

She sits down on the chair beside him, and he awkwardly twists his head to look at her. Above all else, she looks _exhausted_.

“The battle,” he says, suddenly unable to believe that wasn’t his first thought on waking. “Her Majesty.”

Mercedes smiles, and it lifts just a little of the tiredness from around her eyes. “It was fine, Hubert. The bridge is taken, and Edelgard is well. She said she would come to check on you as soon as she was able.”

He frowns, and begins to lever himself up again, leaning on his good arm. “There is no need. I will go to her.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Mercedes says, but she leans forward to place a surprisingly strong hand under his back, and helps him into a sitting position.

The moment she touches him, Hubert suddenly becomes all too aware of the fact that he is shirtless, and her hands are warm on the bare skin of his back. He flinches away as soon as he is sitting fully, but she seems unperturbed, and merely turns her attention to his injured arm. Bathing her hands in the soft light of a heal spell, she holds them above his bandaged arm.

“Just to dull the pain a little,” she adds. “I’ve done as much as I can to heal it, but your body just needs to catch up now.”

Hubert grunts, and flexes his elbow as he feels the pain recede. “Thank you,” he says.

“I’m going to give you a sling, too, but that can wait till you’re ready to leave.”

Another grunt. “My clothes?” he asks.

Mercedes nods, and gets to her feet. “They’re over here somewhere…” she says, moving behind Hubert’s bed. Twisting around to follow her is a little too exhausting, so he just sits there, feeling somehow oddly childlike. He _hates_ being injured, or ill, or anything. Being stuck in an infirmary bed is precisely the most useless place for him, and sitting here, staring down at his own useless body just leaves him feeling irritated.

He turns his hands over in his lap, inspects the dark trails of scars on his fingers, and sighs. Casting dark magic is never pleasant, particularly when you do not have a crest to help you, and these are just the most obvious marks of it. The lines are a rough, purplish colour, like a new bruise that never fades, and run down the insides of his fingers, pooling in his palm, where they begin to fade a little. Then as they follow his veins through his wrists, they go pale, a faint silvery mark on his sallow skin, curling and tracking his blood, until they reach his shoulders, his chest, his heart.

At least the battle for the bridge of Myrddin hasn’t seemed to worsen them. He presses his palms back down against the sheets, and looks away resolutely.

Mercedes comes back with his clothes, and after discreetly turning away to let him manage his own trousers, helps him manoeuvre his injured arm into his shirt, then his jacket. It’s an oddly humiliating experience, but she’s brisk, and soothes the aggravated injury with another heal spell once she’s done, and on the whole Hubert supposes he’s thankful for that.

Then she declares it’s time to sort out a sling. It ends up being more of a cobbled together thing, made of off-cuts of bandages and such, and she hums happily as she knots it all together. Hubert is left sitting awkwardly on the edge of his bed, cradling his injured arm against himself. He suddenly realises that she has to actually put the sling _on_ him, and he presses his scarred palm against his stomach tightly.

It’s fine. She would have seen the scars while treating him, anyway, and he’s not ashamed of them. He is _not_. They are a consequence of his service to Edelgard, of the path they must walk, and they are what they are. He refuses to regret them. But watching Mercedes knot the bandages with smooth, elegant fingers, makes something just… ache a little in his chest.

“My gloves,” he says. “Did you have my gloves?”

She looks up, startled. “Oh! Yes, of course, let me find them.”

Abandoning her sling construction, she hurries off to wherever his clothes had been being kept. It doesn’t take her long, and this time she returns with his boots as well.

“I couldn’t find your socks, I’m afraid,” she said. “Those things have a bit of a tendency to get lost in infirmaries, I don’t know why.”

“It’s fine,” he says curtly. He can cope without socks—she doesn’t need to fuss so.

Carefully, he works his fingers back into the gloves. The left hand takes a little more effort than he was expecting. Even though it’s only the upper arm that’s injured, manoeuvring the hand sends little twinges and spasms through his whole arm. He ends up carefully pushing the cloth over his fingers with his other hand. It’s awkward, and cumbersome, but something lifts in his chest when his hands are fully covered again.

When he looks up, Mercedes is watching him. Or rather, she is watching his hands. When it becomes obvious he has finish, her eyes dart up to his face, and he looks at her, hard, searching for any trace of—what? Pity? Disgust?

It hardly matters. She wears her usual calm smile, and it suddenly strikes him how impenetrable that expression is. It’s smooth, and fits so closely that you can barely tell it’s a mask, but she is quite obviously used to hiding herself behind it.

But the thought flees his head. “I’ll help you with the sling this time,” she’s saying, and his mind crashes back to the here and now. “But you should be able to do it yourself in future. It’s mostly to just… remind you, I suppose, that you shouldn’t be using your arm. And you really mustn’t, all right?”

Hubert resists the urge to roll his eyes, and nods. She loops the sling around his arm, then up behind his neck.

“Turn a little?” Mercedes says, and he twists so he sits sideways on the bed.

From the creaking of the springs, she sits behind him, and then he feels the faintest hint of her warmth by his back as she leans towards him. She knots the sling at the back of his neck, his high collar between her deft fingers and his skin. It was hardly more than minutes ago, but the memory of her fingers against his back—warm, firm, gentle—sends a sudden shiver through him. He can’t quite suppress it.

Mercedes makes a startled sound, and her fingers leave the half-secured knot. “Are you all right?” she asks.

“Yes,” Hubert snaps, more annoyed with himself than her. Then, “Sorry.”

She just hums lightly, and finishes tying the sling up. The springs of the bed groan again, and her warmth disappears.

“There,” she says. “Just… do be careful with it, Hubert.”

He stands too, awkward with his still-bare feet against the rough tarpaulins pretending to be a floor.

“I… I will try,” he says, and is surprised to find he means it.

* * *

Hubert avoids the infirmary once they return to Garreg Mach. He refuses to believe that it’s belated embarrassment, but when he stares at the ceiling late at night and his arm aches, he wonders if that’s really why he’s so hesitant to make that short walk there from the office that is now his.

He avoids it, that is, until the monastery is attacked.

Flayn stares at him, face wild with fear, and shoots a Nosferatu at him that he is too slow to side-step. He feels the old wound tear open, inch by agonising inch, and sees the panic and sorrow in her eyes. He lifts him arms, ignoring every fibre of his body telling him to stop, and shoots a miasma back at her. She dodges out of the way easily, but he feels it burning through his veins, and when he glances down, the dark scars on his fingers are throbbing, thick and dark. Even now, in the middle of a fight, he finds himself wishing he’d remembered his gloves when the alarm for the attack had been sounded.

Then Byleth’s hand is on his shoulder, pulling him away.

“Fall back,” they order abruptly, in that voice that even he cannot argue with. “I’ll talk to Flayn.”

He nods, and staggers backwards, turns reluctantly away from Flayn’s twisted-up, conflicted expression. Dorothea finds him soon enough, and casts heal after heal on him, her expression worried.

“That’s the best I can do,” she says after a while. “You’d better take it to someone else later, though. Linhardt, or Mercedes. They can help more than me.”

He nods stiffly. “Thank you, Dorothea.”

She frowns back at him. “Are you sure you can manage?” she asks. There’s a surprisingly genuine note of concern in her voice, and Hubert smiles faintly.

“I’ll manage. We have a battle to win, after all.”

Dorothea sticks close beside him for the rest of the fight, despite his protestations. She insists on jumping between him and every enemy, and he barely gets off two more spells the entire rest of the afternoon. Each of those, though, burns in his fingers and palms. He clenches his fists to hide it, but Dorothea looks worried anyway.

The moment the last of their enemies has retreated, she drags him bodily up to the infirmary, and pushes him to sit on one of the beds.

“Stay there,” she says, and disappears.

Usually, he’d just ignore something like that, but his head is still spinning slightly with pain as he cradles his once-healed arm close to his body. Nobody else has yet made it up here from the battle, and the room’s clinical atmosphere just feels calm, and soothing.

He lets himself close his eyes, just for a moment, and breathes deeply.

It’s a while before anyone else arrives, but he really has no idea _how_ long. He hears bits and pieces of conversations, footsteps passing by through the window that’s been left open, but it’s surprisingly easy to tune it all out. Almost without realising he’s doing it, Hubert finds himself slumping from his sitting position to lie on his side on the uncomfortable bed. And entirely without realising, he drifts asleep.

He wakes to a soft voice, and warm hand on his side, and the renewed realisation of how painful his arm is.

“Hubert?” Mercedes is asking. “Are you all right?”

He sits up as fast as he can manage, shaking her hand off, and immediately regrets it as the spinning of his head intensifies.

“Mmm,” he grunts, half from pain, half disorientation. “I’m fine.”

Mercedes looks like she doesn’t believe him, but just motions to his jacket and shirt. “Can you take your arm out of that sleeve? I’d like to take a look at the wound.”

It’s a struggle to get the clothes off, every motion making his muscles twinge, but he’s soon sitting there awkwardly half-shirtless. He can’t bring himself to push the clothes off his other arm—he already feels far too bare.

The re-opened wound is covered in half-dried blood, and the skin around it is the yellow-green of a half-healed bruise. Before she touches it, Mercedes bathes her hands in the glow of a heal spell, and Hubert has to resist the urge to sigh when it reaches the wound, and the pain immediately recedes.

He shuts his eyes again as she quietly cleans the wound, and casts a few spells over it.

She breaks the silence, eventually. “It’s not nearly as bad as last time. It should be healed much more quickly.”

Hubert opens his eyes, and sighs. He feels tired to the very centre of his bones, and when he looks at the wound, it still looks like a revolting, festering mess. He looks away, but his gaze just lands on his hands, scars newly inflamed. He feels sick.

“A shirt,” he snaps. “Do you have a clean one here?”

Mercedes purses her lisp just slightly at his harsh tone, but nods and retrieves one from a cupboard in the corner. It’s flimsy, poorly made, but it will do. Hubert shrugs off his soiled, battle-stained clothes entirely, and pulls it on.

The white fabric is too cool, too snowy and perfect. He only feels more irritated.

“Do I need to wear a sling again?” he sneers.

Mercedes goes so far as to frown, but shakes her head. “No, you should be fine.”

“Lucky me,” he mutters.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Hubert?” Mercedes asks. She wears a small, puzzled expression, and Hubert simultaneously hates that he’s bothered her, and bitterly wants to do it more.

He pulls one side of his mouth into an ugly grimace. “I am perfectly fine,” he says. “It cannot have escaped your notice that I am hardly a pleasant person.”

She frowns, and moves closer to him, sits down beside him on the bed. “I am well aware, Hubert.” She reaches out a hand, and presses another heal spell to his arm. “But you’re not usually like this.”

A bolt of rage runs through him, sudden and hot. Her soft, unblemished hands, the too-white shirt, and beneath it, his skin, scarred and ugly—it all feels like some horrible cosmic metaphor. One that he’s had quite enough of.

He reaches out, and grabs her wrist with his good hand, pulling her away from his arm. “ _How_ ,” he says through gritted teeth, “Can you _bear_ to do this?”

Gently, she unwinds his fingers one by one, taking them in her other hand. She holds it lightly, carefully, and her face is faintly puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Hubert suppresses a sneer, though it’s directed at himself more than anything. Wrenching his hand out of her grasp, he holds it up to her. “ _Look_ ,” he says savagely. “You see this? The scars? You know what they mean. And yet you _heal_ me. Again, and again.”

Mercedes catches his hand again, and grasps it between both of hers. She turns his palm upwards, inspects it closely. Slowly, she runs one finger down a swollen, purpled vein.

“Ah,” she says. “From dark magic, I suppose?”

Hubert nods sharply. “These are hands for _harming_ people, Mercedes. _Killing_ people. What would your precious Goddess think of that?”

That makes her expression truly freeze for the first time in their entire argument. Well, only Hubert has really been arguing, but still. She retreats behind her placid smile., and he has no idea whether to be glad that he finally made his point, or just deeply, achingly desperate to tell her no, don’t do that.

He turns his face away instead.

Out of his view, he hears her sigh, and she lowers her hands to her lap. He goes to tug his hand away, but she holds onto it with surprising strength.

“Hubert,” she says. “I don’t particularly want to talk about the Goddess with you. But you—you must know that my views are hardly as simple as they were when we were at the academy.”

He still doesn’t look at her. “You still pray every day,” he says. “I’ve seen you. It’s been five years, and you still haven’t stopped.”

“Yes,” she says, and he turns back to look at her because there’s something wrenchingly sad in her voice. “But Hubert, these five years, I’ve fought your war every day. I know what these scars are because I’ve seen them on Emile’s hands too. And I’m still here.”

“There’s a difference,” Hubert says, swallowing the dryness in his throat. “There’s a difference between—all that, and having to—to heal me.”

Mercedes is still holding his hand in both of hers, and she meets his eyes steadily as she lifts it, holds it level with her chest. “It’s not my job to care about that,” she says. “I’m here to heal you, and I will keep healing you. No matter whether you think you deserve it.”

Then she lifts his hand a little more. She keeps her eye contact—staring right at him—and brings his hand to her face. Then she presses her lips to the scarred inside of his fingers, where the lines of dark magic burn beneath his skin, and any response Hubert was about to make flies out of his head.

It’s a brief kiss, just a slow, soft touch of her lips, but the moment stretches, and stretches, and he can’t look away from her eyes. They’re usually smiling, as calm and gentle as everything else about Mercedes, but right now they burn into him, and all Hubert can do is nod.

Her lips leave his skin, and he suddenly becomes aware that he hasn’t breathed for several long moments. She drops his hand, and gets up, and time resumes its usual flow. Hubert takes a long, shuddering breath in, tries to ignore how it catches in his throat.

“I’ll give you a tonic,” Mercedes says. “It should help with the pain, at least a little, but I’m not sure what else I can do.”

His hand is still hanging in the air where she had left it. He brings it slowly in, and holds it against his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> This has a hell of a lot of headcanons packed into it, so I hope they all make sense. I just like imagining details about how magic works. Also Flayn definitely survived here, don't worry.
> 
> Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/blackberrychai)!


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